Faith and Tolerance in Muslim America
Post-September 11 efforts to capture the hearts and minds of America, to help explain Islam and what Muslims believe.

It rises gracefully—high above the surrounding Indiana cornfields—catching unsuspecting motorists off guard on Interstate 70, forcing them to slow down a little and take a second look at the arabesque designs on the huge mosque.

Located in Plainfield, a bedroom community ten miles (16 kilometers) west of Indianapolis, this mosque has been the headquarters of the Islamic Society of North America for 20 years.

The organization provides religious training, education, materials, and administrative support to Muslim leaders and some 300 mosques and Muslim affiliates in Canada and the United States. Its campus-like tranquility is interrupted only by history’s flare-ups, when television crews or newspaper reporters appear at its gleaming glass archway wanting a quick Muslim reaction to whatever is the dominating event: the Persian Gulf war, Palestinian suicide bombers, the latest Middle East cease-fire. The crews come and go as violence ebbs and flows.

That all has changed since the horrific events of September 11 when skyjackers in airliners attacked the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. and the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York. The quick reactions that sufficed before are no longer good enough.

Now the work at the Islamic Society is to capture the hearts and minds of America, to help explain Islam and what Muslims believe, and, “above all,” says Sayyid Muhammad Syeed, the group’s Secretary General, “to create deeper understanding in America so that a mosque on any corner of any street in any U.S. community is no more a curiosity than a Methodist church. It is like the floodgates have been opened for the possibility of interfaith harmony and dialogue.”

Sayeed helped found the society in 1982 from the university-based Muslim Students Association of USA and Canada. His quest may be formidable in a grief-stricken America.

Since September 11 there have been more than a thousand incidents—ranging from threats and vandalism to murder—toward Muslims or the 1,209 known mosques in America, according to the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a Washington, D.C.-based organization that tracks civil rights and political issues for Muslims in the United States. CAIR activists believe American Muslims are vulnerable and under undue scrutiny, singled out at airport-security checkpoints and unlawfully detained and questioned by federal agents.

Amid that societal fall-out from the attacks, religious prejudice against Muslims still remains— even from the Reverend Franklin Graham, son of the Reverend Billy Graham, one of America’s most respected Christian evangelists. Speaking at an October dedication of a chapel in his home state of North Carolina, the younger Graham said, “We’re not attacking Islam, but Islam has attacked us. The God of Islam is not the same God. He’s not the son of God of the Christian or Judeo-Christian faith. It’s a different God, and I believe it is a very evil and wicked religion.”

Graham’s remarks touched off dismay among Muslims, leading CAIR Executive Director Nihad Awad to respond: “We have found that negative impressions of Islam are most often based on a lack of accurate and objective information.”

Last spring, long before the terrorist attacks on U.S. soil, the country’s major Islamic organizations published an exhaustive report: “The Mosque in America: A National Portrait.” Its estimate of between six and seven million Muslims in America was almost immediately challenged by the American Jewish Committee with an estimate of between 1.9 and 2.8 million. Census numbers are no help because laws prevent census-takers from compiling religious data, but recent estimates by the White House and State Department have put the population at about six million.

The study found that Islam is a fast-spreading faith in America, with a 25 percent increase in the number of mosques over the past seven years. About 30 percent of worshipers at an average mosque are converts from another religion. Behind the large numbers, however, the study discovered that Islam in America is itself a multicultural society.

“One of the most significant findings in this survey is that mosques are quite ethnically diverse,” says Ihsan Bagby, the report’s primary researcher. Bagby noted that 93 percent of all mosques are attended by more than one ethnic group. At the average mosque, ethnic groups are almost equally divided, with South Asians making up the largest third. African-Americans are next, followed by members from the Arabic-speaking world.

Even the buildings are diverse. Mosques can range from traditional domed and arcaded architecture to low-slung contemporary office-like structures.

The study also found that about 60 percent of all mosques were established in the 1980s and 90s, with 80 percent of them located in an urban neighborhood of a metropolitan area. Most Muslims live in large cities on both coasts with significant populations in the Great Lakes region. About 70 percent of mosques provide some form of assistance to people in low-income communities, and some operate a full-time school. For now, all U.S. Muslims should strive to be teachers and good examples of the faith, most leaders advise.

One such Muslim, Syed Ali, has taken heed and is teaching by quiet example. He operates a gasoline station and convenience store in Martinsville, Indiana, a community of about 12,000. He doesn’t push his religious beliefs, but when asked, he has a ready answer: “Basically I tell them my search for a peaceful life and knowledge of the Creator was completed by becoming Muslim,” says Ali, who can trace his family’s conversion to Islam back 11 centuries to when the religion spread to his native India.

The 50-year-old Ali, who has lived in the Midwest for 30 years, has seen his community of fellow Muslims grow from about 25 households when he first arrived to about 1,000 families today. In all of that time he and his family have never been singled out or mistreated for their beliefs. “We are Muslim, but as citizens we are Americans first of all,” he says. “All along I have maintained that attitude.”

“America will ultimately profit and even become an increasingly tolerant sanctuary as it learns more about its Islamic members,” says the Islamic Society of North America’s Syeed. “There is a high level of diversity in the United States. America has been able to build a society based on respect for diversity. This is what makes it great. We understand and anticipate that there will be relapses as well as people with limited understanding, but their numbers will decrease over the years.”

© 2001 National Geographic Society.